ABSTRACT
§1. A serious objection may be made to the argument of the preceding chapter on the ground that we seem to have made beauty “subjective,” that is to say, wholly dependent on the idiosyncrasy of the person who experiences it, and that, as one man’s meat is another’s poison, we could not dispute about taste. Yet we are incorrigibly convinced that there is such a thing as bad, vulgar taste, and most of us try to improve our own. Is it possible to defend such judgments consistently with the view that beauty is not a quality of things but is the projection into them of our own æsthetic experience, which is conditioned by our physical organization and by our past history and the associations that give the object significance? Take a very simple case: One man distempers his room dead white and another cream colour; I think we should hesitate to say that either taste was better. But if one of them confessed that the only reasons he could see for a choice of colour were durability, cheapness and hygiene, we should say he was, in this matter, absolutely without taste. If the only decoration he could think of were pornographic or sadistic we should pass the same sentence on him æsthetically and might add that morally he was reprehensible. If all that occurred to him were to adorn his room with busts and photographs of Lenin, Hitler or Churchill we might either admire or deplore his politics but should say he had no taste. If he scrawled texts or equations or charitable appeals on the distemper we might applaud him as a Christian, a mathematician or a philanthropist but condemn him as an artist.
